Cambodia's malaria death toll halves in 2012: health official

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Forty-seven Cambodian people were killed by malaria last year, down 50 percent compared with 94 deaths in a year earlier, a health official said Friday.

"This is the first largest drop in the last decade," Dr. Char Meng Chuor, head of the National Center for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control, told Xinhua. "We are saving many live now."

During the 2000-2010 period, the average decrease in each year was only around 6 percent per year, he said, attributing the sharp decline last year to the National Strategic Plan on Elimination of Malaria, which was announced by Prime Minister Hun Sen in March, 2011.

He said through the strategic plan, the Health Ministry has invested a lot of money on health education by producing spots and advertising them on TVs, Radios and print media.

Moreover, over a million of mosquito nets were distributed last year to the vulnerable groups of people.

He said that based on the figures, it is believed that the country will be able to eradicate the death from malaria by 2015.

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease. In Cambodia, the disease is often found in rainy season and mostly happens in border provinces, and forest and mountainous provinces.